Pros
Challenging in a good way. Most associate are straight out of college/university. You're going head first into the world of sales, research, briefing, collaboration, project/time management and a lot more. You're also working with top consulting, private equity and hedge funds on projects relating to a broad set of industries (finance, healthcare, risk management, law, etc.). While your day to day really only requires you to connect clients with industry experts, you have access to a lot of information that top firms are paying alot of money for - you can use this access to your advantage; getting direct insights into how top executives think, getting real time info on trends in basically any industry in most parts of the developed world. It's a great first/early job to get a better understanding of the corporate world. There's room for growth and they're a pretty unbiased, quantitative way to determine who gets promoted and when. career progression looks like: Associate - Senior Associate - Project Lead/Client Development Lead - Manager - AVP - VP - CXO. Most of the management team started off as an associate.
Cons
It's an entry level job, so depending on the team you're in or your manager, you won't have a lot of autonomy. Over time, as you get good at the job, that comes. It's a lot of cold calling/outreach, which is never fun. You get immune to people completely ignoring you or telling you to f-off - a great skill in life. There's crazy high turn over in the first couple of months with people getting fired for not performing, or people leaving.